Ampeg Unveils SCR-DI Bass DI Pedal at NAMM

Ampeg’s booth at NAMM this year featured their new revamped BA combo series, but it centered around the unveiling of their brand new SCR-DI. The bass-friendly direct box is their first new pedal in years and brings together an Ampeg preamp, EQ section, and their Scrambler Overdrive.

The SCR-DI starts with a legacy Ampeg preamp with tone stack circuits, which the company says offers tones from “smooth Portaflex to harmonically-rich SVT.” Its EQ section includes Bass, Mid, and Treble controls as well as Ultro Lo and Ultra Hi switches for larger sculpting. The Bass Scrambler overdrive has drive and blend controls to deliver SVT grit and grind. Both the EQ and overdrive sections are footswitchable.

Ampeg fitted the pedal with tons of connectivity including an affected 1/4-inch output, an unaffected 1/4-inch thru, and a dedicated XLR line out with ground lift. It has both 1/4-inch and 1/8-inch auxiliary inputs as well as a 1/8-inch headphone output for practice.

The Ampeg SCR-DI Bass DI with Scrambler Overdrive is housed in a die-cast zinc chassis with no-slip rubber feet. It will start shipping this April with an MSRP or $279.99.

I bought this Ampeg pedal and it destroyed all my Tech 21 pedals. I sold all my Tech 21 pedals on ebay. Its that good. It does however have one problem. Sounds great with passive low output basses however with active basses distorts the input stage too easily. There is a jumper to pad the input but then a major part of the tone is lost when you do this. its still a keeper and I can work around this issue but just needed to be said.

Interesting comments. I use the Sansamp BDDI for most of my bass recordings at miguelbass.com and it also suffers of distorting easily for high output basses… would it be a mistake to add an input level knob (on the Ampeg or the BDDI)? I always end up using another pedal (Boss Limiter) to control the input level…